Page 23 of Just (Fake) Married
Amity sighed, looking up at the ceiling, her arms flung out to the sides. Honestly, sometimes she was so dramatic. “If Mac is there-”
“Of course, he’s going to be there,” I said. “It’s his father’s will.”
“Well, I’m not looking at him if he is.”
“You’re probably going to have to look at him,” I said, pulling tights on under my dress in deference to the winter.
“I can close my eyes.” She threw an arm over her face like a Victorian woman with the vapors, and I caught Bliss rolling her eyes.
Amity and Mac had not-so-secretly dated all through high school. Extremely hot and then extremely cold. It had been exhausting and dramatic.
Senior year, something happened, and it all fell apart.
Since then, they weren’t just cold to each other. They were repellant.
Where Amity was, Mac wasn’t. Where Mac was, Amity wasn’t. And, despite the years passing, that didn’t change.
Today might be the first time they were in the same room together in a long time, so I understood my sister’s dramatics in this case. Regardless of anything that happened today, she was going to have to see Mac, and it was going to sting.
“Girls,” Mom came into my room wearing loose black pants, a gauzy black shirt, and an elaborate silk and velvet knee length kimono over it. She wore her silver necklaces and her bangles. But not her rings. She only wore one, a small diamond I’d never seen before. She looked like a queen.
Jenny and Bruce, wondering what everyone was doing, came wandering down the hallway and into my room.
Now it was officially way too crowded.
Maybe I should have made moving out the priority on the resolution list.
“Excuse me,” I said, and squeezed through the bedroom door to quickly hit the bathroom before we left. I could hear Jenny barking and Bruce honking.
“We should take them with us,” Bliss called out to me. “That might get us kicked out of there quickly.”
When I got out of the bathroom, my family was down in the living room and I went to join them. My hair was up and my lipstick, while not as viper red as my sister’s, was still a statement. My black cowboy boots made me feel like I was going to kick ass and take names.
“Look at you three,” Mom said, and reached out for our hands. “You’re beautiful, strong, fierce women and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
My sisters and I looked sideways at each other. Mom said this kind of thing to us all the time. She’d been a real believer in positive reinforcement. When I flunked out of grad school and came home with a broken heart, she’d wrapped her arms around me and let me cry. Then she’d dried my tears and told me I’d done a good job crying it all out.
“Remember,” she said to us. “No matter what happens today, we will be fine.”
“That sounds ominous,” Amity said.
“I still can’t believe we’re going,” Bliss said. “But if we have to, I think we should steal something.”
“Bliss,” Mom scolded.
“What? For all that historical crap they did to us. It’s time for payback. Let’s take some of their shit.”
Bliss sometimes could be just as dramatic as Amity.
“Come on,” I said, pulling on my coat. We could stand here and talk about what was going to happen for the next five years, it was one of our greatest strengths. But Bliss wasn’t totally off the mark. I wanted to drink their fine booze and eat their fine food and maybe check out what their powder room situationlooked like over there. Rumor was, that house had four separate bathrooms.
Four. Of. Them.
“Let’s go and show them that we don’t give a single shit about this nonsense.”
Who I should have been worried about was my mom.
She was the one who surprised all of us.
